Pronounced Turn Research Articles

Policy-takers and policy calibrations: exploring the demand side of micro-level policy design choices

In the literature on policy design, the topic of citizen or policy-taker compliance, or the lack thereof, has been understood mainly in terms of economistic motivations responding to incentives and deterrents. That is, until recently. A pronounced turn toward behavioral public policy over the last two decades has diversified the set of possible propositions that are available for policy design scholars to study policy-takers. Consequently, how the diversity of policy-taker motivations and behavioral responses can be considered in the design of policy mixes and their implementation is an emerging area of study. Here, we contribute to this research effort by conceptualizing how the motivations of policy-takers affect their compliance response to the calibration of different types of policy instruments. We first elaborate on the inter-relationships between heterogenous policy-taker motivations, policy instrument calibrations, and heterogenous behavioral responses. Next, we use the example of Singapore’s approach to the management of a cyclical environmental disease (dengue) to illustrate the mix of motivations on the part of policy-takers. We then offer some thoughts on how policy instrument calibrations can be deployed to target heterogenous policy-taker motivations and induce greater policy participation.

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Baʿthist State. Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968–2003

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Baʿthist State. Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968–2003

EU’ve Got to Be Kidding: Anxiety, Humour and Ontological Security

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a pronounced turn to humour in EU discourse. From attempts to build solidarity with/through the rights of satirists after the Danish Cartoon Crisis and Charlie Hebdo, to ongoing efforts to re-brand the EU as a reflexive and liberal polity through self-deprecating messaging and the use of snark in diplomacy on Brexit/Trump, the rise of EU humour raises critical questions for IR. This paper argues that one important way to think about humour is as a mechanism for managing anxiety. A widely known ‘defence mechanism’, humour, joking and laughter can suspend the seriousness and pressure of difficult social situations. We draw on the literature on ontological security to argue that, when deployed in political and diplomatic discourses, humour might tell us rather more about the power relations, hierarchies, and instabilities which characterise a given polity.

Patriarchy, New Left Post-Neoliberalism, and the Valuing of Care Work: The Labor Conditions of Nicaraguan Nurses under Sandinismo’s “Second Stage”

This article examines how the labor conditions of nurses in Nicaragua have evolved through twenty-five years of health care policy and regime transition, focusing on the period since the return to power in 2007 of the Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional (FSLN). I ask whether the deterioration in nurses’ work-related well-being that were imposed by neoliberal health care restructuring have been redressed by the FSLN. I connect findings from interviews and focus groups with over fifty nurses to long-standing patterns in the gendering of care work, as well as the Sandinista track record in exploiting these patterns. Also relevant is the FSLN’s mutual antagonism with feminist movements and its incremental but pronounced turn toward a regressive stance on gender equality. Finally, a steady drift toward authoritarianism by the FSLN government constrains the capacity for nurses to collectively assert their interests as workers and professionals.